Page 112 - Arabian Studies (II)

102 Arabian Studies II

handed over to the Government of India. The Ministry of Blockade
in a letter to the Foreign Office, requested that the Government of
India should be asked to hold this money at the disposal of the
O.P.D.A. until the end of the war and ‘in the meantime I would
request that the sums so received should be invested in British War
Loan’. It was not until August 1917 that the sum of
£28,151 16.v. 0d. was accordingly invested. As a result of the interest
this sum had increased to £31,525 17.v. 0d. by December 1919, of
which £30,000 was then invested in three-monthly Treasury
Bills.1 4 1
A request that a representative of the O.P.D.A. visit Sallf was
granted in 1920, but it was not until 9 March 1923 that the India
Office asked if it was convenient to be relieved of the responsibility
of holding the assets of the O.P.D.A. and if they could be handed
over the the Council of Administration of the O.P.D.A. without
having to wait for the Peace Treaty with Turkey to come into
operation. This was permitted and £35,000 British Treasury Bills and
£2708 Is. 3d. were paid into the Imperial Ottoman Bank for the
Council of Administration of the O.P.D.A. A portion of the O.P.D.
on the Sallf salt mines was allotted to the ldrlsl in 1921, but Sayyid
Muhammad refused to pay it. He argued that during the Turkish
occupation of ‘AsTr no improvements had been made: the
occupation had not benefitted the country ‘civically, socially,
educationally or morally ... see if the Arabs are justified in paying
any portion of the Ottoman Public Debt. Of course we shall be quite
willing and justified in paying our portion of the debt without demur
if the Turks could prove they had spent that money in uplifting the
condition of the people in the slightest degree and not merely in
keeping large garrisons in the country for the perpetual subjection
;, and slavery of the people. . . . Secondly the revenues of ‘AsTr and
Yemen was far below the expenditure of the Turkish Government in
these parts. . .. Thirdly the portion of ‘AsTr and Yemen which I am
holding at present is only a small proportion of the whole
country. ’14 2
In January 1929 a British company, Steel Brothers, sent
Commander Craufurd to *§an‘a’ to attempt to obtain the §allf
concession. Only in May did Craufurd receive a definite answer from
Imam Yahya who said that he would not grant any concessions to
British companies until he had come to terms with the British
Government: if he failed in that Imam Yahya threatened to grant the
Sallf concession to either the Russians, Italians or Americans.14
Also in 1929 a representative of Laurie and Company of Calcutta, E.
R. Bailey, who had been an employee of the Ottoman Public Debt

.